The planned closures have been strongly condemned by Australian health professionals and the World Health Organisation who fear that it will lead to an increase in multi-drug resistant or MDR-TB, already prevalent in PNG.

The High Court will next week hear the appeal of the former Solomon Islands attorney general, who has waged a five year battle against the Australian government’s attempt to prosecute him on what he alleges are “politically motivated” statutory rape allegations.

In a blatant attack on democratic rights, two former university students were arrested when they attempted to deliver a petition to the administration of Victoria University of Wellington (VUW) in New Zealand on October 21.

By reaching a deal with Colombo—that is, with the regime responsible for the oppression of Tamils—the Australian Labor government is legitimising its police state measures and nullifying the basic right of all people to seek asylum under international law.

The Democratic Socialist Perspective will dissolve itself into the ailing Socialist Alliance electoral front in January 2010. Modelled closely on France’s New Anti-capitalist Party, the DSP is making a pitch for allies in official bourgeois politics, above all the Greens.

The corporate press claims that the Australian financial system has survived the global financial crisis because of good regulation and sound banking practice. In truth, Australian banks only survived because of unprecedented government intervention.

About 190 professional engineers at Qantas voted by 98 percent to take industrial action after seven months of negotiations for a new work agreement failed to resolve issues over pay and working conditions.

Hearings over the past two days have been dominated by two key issues—Australian complicity with lawyer Julian Moti’s allegedly unlawful removal from the Solomons in December 2007, and the staggering amounts of money paid to members of the alleged victim’s family.

The photograph published in yesterday’s press of John Faulkner, the Defence Minister in the Australian Labor government, draping an honorary Order of Australia around the neck of General David Petraeus, speaks volumes.

The tragic drowning of 12 Sri Lankan Tamils northwest of the Cocos Islands on Sunday is another grim reminder that the election of the Rudd Labor government in November 2007 has changed nothing for refugees and asylum seekers.

Two weeks after an Australian customs ship rescued 78 Tamil asylum seekers, the unresolved standoff over their future has focussed attention on the Labor government’s inhumane and illegal treatment of refugees.

September marked the tenth anniversary of the Australian-led military intervention into East Timor. It is also a decade since a layer of pseudo “left” groups organised “troops in” demonstrations—performing a vital service for the Howard government and the Australian ruling elite.

All the plantation unions, including those that initially opposed it, have effectively fallen into line behind a deal that binds workers to poverty-level wages and productivity speed-up for the next two years.

Justice Mullins concluded that the police and prosecution’s failure to disclose all the relevant documents on time meant that defence’s cross examination of the prosecution’s witnesses could not proceed this week.